Flipkart Delivery Man Murdered For ₹12,000 Cellphone In Bengaluru

The accused allegedly slit the delivery man's throat as he did not have the money to pay for the phone.

On 9 December, a Flipkart delivery man was murdered for a cellphone as the customer who had ordered it did not have the money to pay for it. The throat of the 29-year-old delivery man, Nanjunda Swamy, was slit allegedly by the 22-year-old gym trainer K Varun Kumar as he did not have ₹11,999 for the Redmi Note 3. The body was found in the lift shaft of a building in Vijayanagar in Bengaluru.

According to The Times of India, Varun was in dire need of a cellphone as all his clients in the gym and his friends had one. He had asked his father to lend him some money, but he had refused saying that he didn't have enough cash, and since Varun had started working, he should fund his expenses on his own.

Varun then decided that killing the delivery man would be the only way to get the cellphone without having to pay for it, so he started plotting the murder. On 8 December, he ordered the phone online and gave the gym's landline number as his own.

On 9 December, around 12:30 pm, the delivery man called up Varun who asked him to come to the second floor of the building. At first, Varun tried to snatch the phone from the delivery man, however, Swamy managed to overpower him and ran out of the gym. The accused then hit his head with a flower pot and continued attacking him, till he fell unconscious. After that, Varun slit his throat with the knife that he had kept in the gym.

As per the report, the police said that after slitting Swamy's throat, the accused watched him bleed to death and dumped the body only after 10 hours. "After murdering the victim around 12.45 pm, the accused hid the body inside the gym as he had difficulties in shifting it. At the time of the incident, there was nobody in the gym. When a few customers came for the evening session, Varun sent them back giving after cooking up a story. Later in the night, after the bank on the first floor and a fruit stall in the basement had shut for the night, Varun shifted the body around 11 pm to the basement. He kept the body in the lift shaft and escaped," an officer who is part of the investigations told TOI.

The accused then escaped with two cellphones, ₹10,000 and other goods that were there with the delivery man. He then started using the Redmi phone and gave the other one to his friend.

On 11 December, the victim's father lodged a complaint with the police and around the same time, the police discovered his body in the lift shaft.

"We spoke to the online portal where the victim worked. We got to know that he was missing after he went to deliver a smartphone to a customer in Vijayanagar and it was the same building where the body was found. We also got to know from the customers that Varun had not opened the gym since Friday. We suspected his involvement and arrested him from his residence SVG Nagar in Moodalapalya on Tuesday," the officer added.

Varun has been booked for murder and robbery under IPC 302 and 397 respectively.